The concerns about wind and rain delaying the flight didn't pan out. Air France #39 is pulling away from Dulles gate #42 as we speak. We be cool. Two wailing babies in my section. Isn't it fair to put crying babies and their parents in the luggage area below the seats? I'm speaking as a father of two boys. I've been there. I used to be mortified when my kids disturbed others.

A much younger Bill O'Reilly (as he looked, I'm guessing, a good 12 or 15 years ago) showing a little temper on Inside Edition. Pretty funny, I feel. Video provided by the College Humor guys.

Sunday's post about Steven Soderbergh finishing Che at lower Manhattan's Post Works is "wrong," a trustworthy tech guy says. "Not sure who led you down that road. They should get their shorts yanked.

"Both films are being finished at Technicolor," he says. "Tim Stipan of Technicolor Creative Services New York did the DI, and the DCDM for Cannes is being done at Technicolor Creative Services in London. And Technicolor Madrid is doing the filmout and video mastering."

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Two of my all-time favorite movie titles are I Dismember Mama, which was used for a 1974 slasher film, and The Importance of Being Ernest, the title of a script for a Jim Varney "Ernest" film that was unfortunately not used. And I've always loved Out of the Past, the quietly haunting title of Jacques Tourneur's legendary 1947 noir with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer.

I'm also partial to Se7en, Freddie Got Fingered, Platoon and Earth Girls Are Easy...Read More

Posts will be few and far between starting tomorrow morning due to last-minute running around before heading out to JFK for the flight to France. I may be able to tap some stuff out while waiting for this or that plane. The Big Black-Out period begins around 5 pm Eastern with the departure from Washington, D.C. (I went for a cheaper flight that entailed flying there first from JFK) to Charles DeGaulle. All in, it'll be catch-as-catch-can for 18 to 20 hours. The thing to do during long flight periods, I've found, is take a lot of photos.

Steven Spielberg's long-delayed Abraham Lincoln movie, which I've been writing about for nearly three years as an example of Spielberg's capacity for endless fence-sitting when so inspired, may finally roll sometime in early 2009. Variety's Michael Fleming, responding to a Spielberg comment made to the German weekly magazine Focus, reported today that the directing "will return his attention to an epic project about the 16th president" about shooting Tintin in the fall.

Great -- heavy rain and wind will begin in the NYC area starting tomorrow morning. Maybe my Paris flight will be delayed and I can miss the Easy Jet flight I'm supposed to take from Paris to Nice two hours after I land at 6:15 Tuesday morning. Yeah!

"I don't know who I am," former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson says to N.Y. Times contributor Tim Arango in a 5.11 piece about James Toback's Tyson, a pared-down but altogether touching doc that will show later this week in Cannes. "That might sound stupid," Tyson continues. "I really have no idea. All my life I've been drinking and drugging and partying, and all of a sudden this comes to a stop."

The line this most recalls, of course, is the one from Wim Wenders' The American Friend, spoken to Dennis Hopper...Read More

"I remember seeing Greenwich Village from seven feet up in the air growing up as a kid, because he'd have me on his shoulders and we'd be tripping around. And at a time before underground and independent film became a hot idea, then a dirty word, then a hot idea again as it is nowadays, my dad was making films that influenced a generation of filmmakers.'" -- Robert Downey, Jr., speaking four days ago about his director dad, Robert Downey, Sr., at the "Time 100" celebration at Lincoln Center.

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"I'd almost forgotten I existed. Being selected by Cannes has done wonders for me. I thought working again might have a negative effect and I nearly turned it down, but it's been quite the opposite. My heart beats anew." -- British director Terrence Davies, director of Of Time and City, a low-budget, personal documentary about the changes in Liverpool since his childhood, speaking to the Guardian's Jason Solomon.

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Articles by Maureen Dowd, Robert Novak and Bob Ray Sanders are saying either Barack Obama won't ask Hillary Clinton to be his vice-presidential running mate, or would be wise not to.

Clinton's loathsomeness has become the stuff of legend, yes, and her campaign since the start of the New Hampshire inning has colored her reputation for good. But sometimes in politics you have to hold your nose and make an accomodation with people who may be repugnant in some respects if they can provide what you need. John F. Kennedy didn't pick Lyndon Johnson...Read More

Steven Soderbergh has been doing his frantic last-minute editing of Che at Post Works, a Soho facility on Varick. ("The best in the world for film and video post-production...no one compares. For real." -- Bob J.) A magazine editor told me over lunch a couple of days ago that he's spoken to a Che guy who wonders if they'll finish in time for the Cannes screening on Wednesday, 5.21.

It hit me yesterday afternoon that I had left my passport in my bureau drawer. My flight to Paris leaves Monday at 1:45 pm, so I called Fed Ex and was relieved to hear they could deliver it to my Brooklyn address no later than 8:30 am that morning. So I called the guy who's staying in my place and left a message to please put the passport in an envelope with the Brooklyn address on it, and give it to a Fed Ex pick-up person who would be there between noon and 2 pm yesterday.

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Yesterday my son Dylan and I visited my mom at an old folks' home where she lives in Southbury, Connecticut. I'd been told by a nice woman who works for the facility that my mom, who's been grieving since the recent death of her daughter Laura, was somewhat upset by the presence of her ashes, which she had been keeping in her bedroom closet. So Dylan and I resolved that we would take the remains down to the family plot in a cemetery in Wilton, Connecticut, where our family lived from '64 to '94, and surreptitiously bury them ourselves.

Amy Poehler's delivery of the "my supporters are racist" line got the biggest laugh and even a little applause on last night's SNL. The other two rationales: "I'm a sore loser" and "I have no ethical standards." Not genius-level or even that funny, really, but who would argue this isn't where Clinton is coming from? It's easy, of course, to go with a spot like this now.

The Troma guys are claiming that weekend ticket sales for Poultrygeist, Night of The Chicken Dead tallied $12,000 for a single-screen showing at Manhattan's Village East Theater. This is the highest per-screen haul of any film playing anywhere this weekend, they say. A press release says that Poultrygeist was called "a masterpiece!" by an Ain’t It Cool poster, and that CHUD's Jason Pollock has called it "the best film Troma's ever produced, without a doubt.”

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Lena Gieseke's 3-D recreation of Pablo Picasso's Guernica. I'm wondering if any American painters or sculptors have created anything within the last three or four years about the horrors of Iraq? If so, have they appeared at an any galleries?

HE reader Matthew Dessem has sent along a still taken from that first seven minutes of Speed Racer clip that went up last Thursday. He pointed out the numerous duplications that the Wachowski's CG guys copied and pasted to make up the crowd. The same five or six people are everywhere, and nobody is sitting in rows -- they're just thrown together in rough collage fashion. It's no big deal, but I can't recall seeing a frame capture of digital crowd with this many obvious repeats. (Click on the photo caption for a larger image.)

After reading Nikki Finke's well-reported story (last updated yesterday morning) about the temporary SAG shutdown of David O. Russell's Nailed, a Washington, D.C.-based comedy about relationships, politics and morality, I reviewed the Amazon.com information about "Sammy's Hill," the Kristin Gore novel that the script, co-written by she and Russell, is based upon, according to Finke.

There are differences between the book...Read More

In his usual perfunctory way, N.Y. Times reporter Michael Cieply has reported on the bad-internet-buzz-chasing-Indy 4 story ("Indiana Jones Is Battling the Long Knives of the Internet"). He's ignored, however, what may turn out to be the most interesting aspect of reactions to the film.

This, as I wrote two days ago, refers to a possible generation gap with older viewers liking it (or at least finding a place in their hearts for it) and younger viewers being less enthused, at least in part because the film has allegedly been infused with an older guy's (i.e., ...Read More

For years I've made do at the Cannes Film Festival with a regular pink pass, which at least is better than blue and way above yellow. A couple of days ago I found out that I've been slightly upgraded to a pink-with-a-yellow-pastille pass -- the first time this has ever happened despite years of persistent pleading. The highest-grade press pass is all white, but that's a privelege extended mostly (only?) to veteran dead-tree types. Has an online journo ever been granted one? I'm asking.

Am I understanding correctly that Saturday Night Live has just started its political blog? Now they do this? With Amy Poehler's HRC front and center just as the Real McCoy is entering her final cycle? Or is it that people are just starting to notice...?

Accurately or not, the general impression has been all along that Poehler and former SNL costar Tina Fey...Read More

One of HE's fundamental attitude foundations was, after all, laid out in an excerpt from The Film Snob's Dictionary back in the summer of '05 (even if the book itself wasn't in stores until February '06), to wit: "The Film Snob fairly revels, in fact, in the notion that The Public Is Stupid and Ineducable, which is what sets him apart from the more benevolent film buff, the effervescent, Scorsese-style enthusiast who delights in introducing novitiates to The Bicycle Thief and Powell-Pressburger movies."

The Film Department CEO Mark Gill has told Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Schuker that "the quality of independent films [this summer] is higher, less bleak and dark, and the studio films are more cartoon stuff and less for a college educated audience. Last summer, everybody in my snobby crowd saw the Bourne movie and loved it, [but] this summer there are fewer of those big blockbusters to go to." Is The Dark Knight not expected to appeal to film snobs? I know for sure that Tropic Thunder will. Iron Man...Read More

Remember the days when vampire movies didn't need super powers and the ability to fly in order to compete with other CG thrillers? I do. Their peculiarities aside, vampires used to be shlep around and suck blood somewhat normally. No longer. When did they become flying bullets? Was it with Len Wiseman's Underworld? Before? If vampires can stop cars from slamming into people, does this mean they can also stop falling jumbo jets from slamming into baseball stadiums? Can they now theoretically lift ocean liners out of the water and hurl them into space orbit?

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In its second weekend, Paramount and Marvel's Iron Man has again taken the #1 position. With my California number-guys currently experiencing REM sleep, Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason is reporting earnings of $14.7 million yesterday with an expected $49 million by Sunday night and 10-day earnings total of roughly or close to $175 million.

Poor Speed Racer, forecast for weeks as a likely disappointment, apparently took in only $6.5 million yesterday and will hit about $23 million...Read More

...but this is a somewhat clever ad, pushing the idea that it's advisable to see an optometrist now and then. The actor playing the driver/would-be recipient does a very good job. The last shot would, of course, never be permitted on American television. So what else is new?

Rope of Silicon's Brad Brevet has posted new stills from three major Cannes attractions -- Steven Soderbergh's Che, Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York and Fernando Meirelles' Blindness.

God forbid that the Democratic primary fight goes to the Denver convention (which of course it won't), but watch this climactic scene from Franklin Schaffner and Gore Vidal's The Best Man ('64) and ask yourself which of the two present candidates -- Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama -- is closer to the character of Cliff Robertson's Joe Cantwell and which somewhat resembles Henry Fonda's William Russell? (Thanks to HE reader John Muller for passing this along.)

Before zotzing Picturehouse and Warner Independent, Warner Bros. management "did look at various permutations of keeping the companies in discussion," the Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Goldstein and Borys Kit wrote last night, including having Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and WI honcho Polly Cohen co-manage a merged specialty division, "something the execs agreed to do shortly after the New Line absorption was announced, Cohen said."

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Did the cautious-to-a-fault John Edwards say "I just voted for him on Tuesday" or "I just voted for 'em on Tuesday"? The man is a hedger, a tap-dancer, a slick operator, an angler-dangler with no balls.

Here, sequentially, are some of the Cannes Film Festival day-by-day highlights:

Wednesday, 5.14: Fernando Meirelles' Blindness (comp.).

Thursday, 5.15: Pablo Trapero's Leonera and Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (comp.) along with Mark Osborne and John Stevenson's Kung Fu Panda (non-comp), Steve McQueen's Hunger and de Bong Joon Ho, Leos Carax and Michel Gondry's Tokyo! (Un Certain Regard).

Friday, 5.16: Arnaud Desplechin's Un Conte de Noel and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Uc Mayman (comp.) along with Allison Thompson's The Third Wave...Read More

The Cannes Film Festival official screening schedule went up yesterday with the press screening schedule expected to post sometime tomorrow.

The rundown identifies Steven Soderbergh's The Argentine and Guerilla as a single film called Che that runs 4 hours and 28 minutes. Meaning, obviously, that as far as Cannes is concerned, the two-movie concept is out the window in favor of presenting a single epic-sized film with an intermission.

Che...Read More

Thanks to Variety's Anne Thompson for the initial YouTube post/link, and kudos to dialogue (i.e., subtitle) writer and stand-up comedian James Adomian. This isn't as funny as the collapse of HD-DVD video, but it's close.

Hitler/Clinton: "The superdelegates were supposed to trump the fucking voters! And now you tell me those fat fucks are waddling over to worship that dandy Obama, lke he's the second coming of Jimi Hendrix...Read More

That "All Things Considered" interview I did with NPR media reporter David Folkenflik two days ago will be linkable online by roughly 7 pm this evening. It's not just me talking -- it's three or four movie critics including, I think, former N.Y. Daily News critic Jack Mathews. The piece is called "Movie Critics Disappearing from Newsrooms."

In early April I wondered if anyone cares enough about Carol Reed's Outcast of the Islands (1951) to put it out on DVD. Those dedicated wackdoodles at the Criterion Collection, say. Well, hail hail rock 'n' roll because Outcast will air on Turner Classic Movies come Friday, August 22. August is traditionally TCM's one-star-per-day month and that day will be devoted to Outcast star Trevor Howard. The complete August schedule (with some other interesting rarities) is viewable here.

After reportedly trying to forge some kind of amicable, foward-looking merger between Picturehouse and Warner Independent, Warner Bros. management has suddenly thrown up its hands and is getting out of the "dependent" business altogether, it was announced about an hour ago.

WB president & COO Alan Horn released a statement that seems to translate, when you boil the snow out of it, into the following: "Sorry, but we've come to realize that running a Fox Searchlight- or Paramount Vantage-type operation just isn't our bag...Read More

Glenn Kenny, one of the country's finest film critics and a brilliant writer to boot, has been cut loose by Premiere.com. "What this means for this blog is still up in the air," he wrote this morning. "I've got meetings this afternoon in which such things are to be negotiated. In any case, I now join the ever-growing ranks...Read More

Speed Racer (opening Friday) is running at 90, 29 and 16, which looks to me like $25 to $30 million, at best. (Normally a 16 first choice means $15 to $20 million, depending on the demographic, but the family-trade current will kick this one up.) What Happens in Vegas is running at 87, 32 and 18. David Mamet's Redbelt is going wide this week with 20 general, 24 definite interest and 2 first choice. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (opening 5.16) is at 96, 42 and 14. Sex and the City...Read More

"In a heated phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late last month, Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut off campaign money to congressional Democrats unless Pelosi embraced a new plan by the movie mogul to finance a revote of the Democratic presidential primaries in Florida and Michigan, according to three officials who were briefed on the contents of the conversation." -- filed this morning by CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry.

Yesterday's Grand Wizard award went to Hillary Clinton for blatantly using the term "white Americans" in a USA Today interview written by Kathy Kiely and Jill Lawrence. "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said, citing an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

''Bush may turn out to be the worst president in history,'' W. director Oliver Stone has told Entertainment Weekly . ''I think history is going to be very tough on him. But that doesn't mean he isn't a great story.

Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks as George and Laura in Oliver Stone's W.

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I wasn't going to say anything and just wait until the 5.18 screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in Cannes, but since Ain't It Cool has run a neg review from "ShogunMaster" (and since Hollywood Wiretap has linked to it), the cat is out of the bag and I may as well share something of my own.

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"The big question if Clinton stays in the race is this: Just how will she campaign? Yesterday, there were no negative TV ads or attack mailers. But Clinton did stress that she can win the general, implying that Obama might not be able to.

"'I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,' she told USA Today, citing her support with white working-class voters. It's comments like that one that might drive more supers toward Obama pretty quickly. Why? Because they know the math...Read More

I admire and respect the moves and the intent of Speed Racer (Warner Bros., 5.9), which I saw last night at the Leow's IMAX near Lincoln Center. Right away I was saying to myself, "All right, this is out there....infuriating but brilliantly out there." But it offers almost nothing in the way of genuine personal charm (except for the monkey, Chim-Chim) and I began looking at my watch starting around the 45-minute mark. Honestly? More like a half-hour in.

This is a deranged, steroid-cranked family-action movie...the work of madmen...Read More